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Lifting people in developing coun-
tries out of poverty and improv-
ing the stance of the country
itself has long been a challenge
faced by governments, with the
Greater Caribbean being no
exception. While there have been some suc-
cesses, particularly in poverty alleviation, by
and large, wholesale movement of country
metrics have eluded most governments. Fol-
lowing the formulation of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), we have expe-
rienced an increase in focus on measuring
outcomes and results to guide policy devel-
opment and poverty reduction. Today, we
examine the role of geography and the use of
statistics in the thrust towards development
outcomes.
We are living in a global information society
where the amount of information and its flow
to society is increasing. Many are now recog-
nising that statistics plays a major role in shap-
ing and providing scientific information that
is useful in almost every aspect of human life.
Modern decision making, whether done by a
national government or an international agency,
is increasingly using statistical methods to
improve the quality of information.
Such an increasing appreciation of the role,
power and importance of statistics is now
leading to a higher priority being attached to
statistical capacity development in many devel-
oping countries.
The established United Nations "High Level
Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda"
in its report entitled "A New Global Partner-
ship: Eradicate Poverty and Transform
Economies through Sustainable Development,"
sets out "inter alia" a universal agenda to erad-
icate extreme poverty from the face of the
earth by 2030, and deliver on the promise of
sustainable development. The report called
for a data revolution for sustainable develop-
ment with a new international initiative to
improve the quality of statistics and informa-
tion available to citizens.
Despite this international consensus on the
importance of reliable national statistics, many
developing countries do not have the sound
and credible national statistical systems needed
to underpin the development processes. Inad-
equate statistics has always been a major lim-
itation to studies done on Caribbean
economies.
The Caribbean region has often been
described as data poor with many differing
perspectives to correcting this problem. In
May 2012, the United Nations Economic Com-
mission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(UNECLAC) highlighted the fact that Caribbean
countries continue to struggle with enhancing
their statistical capacities. In the area of eco-
nomic statistics notable progress has been
made but significant gaps exist in all other
areas of statistics. Improved statistics by itself
however will not solve the myriad problems
that the region faces.
Understanding that location and place is a
vital component of effective decision making,
geoinformatics, also known as Geographic
Information Science (GIS), is becoming a rap-
idly expanding field. It involves the use of
techniques for proper storage, classification,
representation and analysis of data so that it
can be used to efficiently.
In the area of risk reduction, linking GIS to
hazard mapping involves the layering of a
complex number of datasets on environment,
land ownership, land use and transport in
order to accurately capture vulnerability. As
a primary input, such data includes the names,
locations and sizes of population centres
retrieved from national census data.
Second, information on physical infrastruc-
ture such as roads, residential housing and
commercial buildings gathered from state
agencies responsible for issuing building per-
mits and maintaining infrastructure must also
be included and assessed. These databases
must be dynamically linked and updated in
near real-time as vulnerability and hazard pro-
files frequently change.
Macroeconomic vulnerability to natural haz-
ards is predicated however on five basic con-
ditions that can be classified both as location
and time specific. These include: the type of
natural hazard, the overall structure of the
economy, the geographic size of a country,
the country s income level and stage of devel-
opment, and the prevailing socioeconomic
conditions, including the policy environment
and the state of the economy. Taking into
account the above criteria, vulnerability there-
fore is not merely a function of hazard events
and the physical space and but rather its inter-
section with other social and economic vari-
ables.
Aside from locating and mapping physical
vulnerability, geospatial data must then be
added to other socioeconomic and demo-
graphic data so as to facilitate informed deci-
sion-making among policy makers.
In plotting socioeconomic variables, a
national land-use data layer serves as the pri-
mary input in this instance. An INGC study
on Spatial Data Infrastructures notes that
"Hazard zones can be subdivided by economic
activities such as agriculture, forestry, mining,
recreational, transportation, industrial, com-
mercial, and residential."
In addition, other economic indices such
as per capita income, unemployment rate, per
capita motor vehicle ownership, and proportion
of residents that have personal property and
commercial insurance are all important indi-
cators of the ability of the population to recover
after the event. This type of data is usually
recorded in census tabulations or annual tax
returns and could also be incorporated into
the platform.
In examining those communities often con-
sidered vulnerable, analysis of the above sta-
tistical indices would reveal that it is specific
social conditions that expose some social
groups to the potential for greater harm when
a disaster strikes, thereby limiting their ability
to cope.
Regionally, despite increasing urbanisation,
a large share of the Caribbean s population
live in what can be considered rural areas, out
of reach of the policies designed to reduce
poverty, and removed from employment
opportunities.
Little regulation has caused the acquisition
of housing characterised by non-existent public
infrastructure, unsafe dwellings and over-
crowding. It then results that disaster risk is
disproportionally concentrated in lower-income
households and among traditionally margin-
alised groups such as women, children and
the disabled. It is this problem, as persons
seek better fortunes, which drives urbanisation
leading to increase vulnerability. These same
persons then become further entrenched in
their powerlessness and exclusion, reinforcing
poverty and undermining development.
It is clear therefore that vulnerability is in
part socially produced. With economic devel-
opment strategy being sensitive to the poor
and at risk, strategies around risk reduction
should focus on reducing economic vulner-
ability of marginal communities. Resilience
steps in here as an important component of
response planning as it refers to the capacity
of a country s economy to absorb losses and
recover.
We therefore need a multidimensional
approach to examine issues of vulnerability,
cognizant of the fact that improved resilience
of the community level leads to better allocation
of public resources.
Additionally, improving the livelihood of at
risk population drives the macro- and micro-
economic metrics in the right direction.
Administrative agencies must therefore seek
to create new tools that are able to critically
examine, with certainty risk levels of com-
munities so there can be targeted interventions,
rather than solely facilitating political goals.
With the cooperation of Mexico who cur-
rently chairs the United National Initiative on
Global Geospatial Information Management
(UN-GGIM) Regional Committee for the
Americas, the ACS is currently implementing
the project "Caribbean Geospatial Information
Infrastructure Strengthening".
This project seeks to promote the develop-
ment of regional spatial data infrastructure
by strengthening the generation, use and shar-
ing of geospatial information in 11 countries
in the Caribbean and integrating them into
the wider UN-GGIM platform. As part of the
project, these countries participated in the
recently concluded Fourth Session of the United
Nations Committee of Experts on Global
Geospatial Information Management which
took place at the United Nations Headquarters
in New York. This serves as a precursor to
their formal integration into the UN-GGIM
Americas sub-group.
Addressing underlying risk drivers is critical
to effectively managing disaster risk and ensur-
ing future resilience and sustainability. It is in
this space that the merit of use of statistics
and use of informatics tools become visible
as the ACS works towards the establishment
of a Caribbean territorial information platform
for disaster prevention.
Effective planning on all fronts, taking into
account economic, social and environmental
data is critical in bolstering human capacity
and furthering sustainable development objec-
tives.
George Nicholson is the director of trans-
port and disaster risk reduction and
Nayaatha Taitt is the research assistant of
transport and disaster risk reduction of the
Association of Caribbean States. Any cor-
respondence or feedback should be sent
to feedback@acs-aec.org.
BG18 COMMENTARY
BUSINESS GUARDIAN www.guardian.co.tt A G EE
www.acs-aec.org
Association of
Caribbean States
Importance of statistics, geography